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defensive

Today I had a Pathfinder session with some friends. One of them is new to the game, so today’s session was to give him some practice and to get him familiar with the game’s mechanics.

When I started planning the session, I planned for the final boss to be just this un-killable wall, with the idea that their objective was through the door behind him. Burke, as I named him, wouldn’t be that good at fighting, but would fight defensively and have the biggest armor he could get. After I made him with as high of an AC as possible, it dawned on me that having someone this hard to hit and move would be frustrating for a new player to deal with, so I switched gears and went for something easier.

But I liked this build so much that I just wanted to share it. I’m sure that there are things that could have been done to make things better, but for something built in less than an hour I think it was pretty good. Here’s how he went.

Burke the Hobgoblin (I picked Hobgoblin because they get a bonus to Dex and Con. Since I wanted him to be hard to hit and have a lot of hitpoints, Dex and Con were my focuses).

Level 7 Fighter (armor master Archetype) and level 4 Stalwart Defender (prestige class in the Advanced Player’s guide). The armor master archetype gets him some DR that stacks with Adamantine Armor, so I figured it was a no brainer to give to a wall.

The Ability scores are: STR: 14 DEX: 16 CON: 20 INT: 13 WIS: 10 CHA: 7 (I used the point buy system, and used 20 points since that’s what I’m giving all of my players. I gave him a 13 INT just so he could get combat expertise. Highest is CON for the hitpoints, DEX for the AC boost, and STR so he’s not completely terrible at damage. WIS doesn’t matter, and a negative Charisma modifier isn’t going to hurt him at all.)

His hitpoint total ended up being 155 (we use a house rule that if you roll less than half on your hit die, you re-roll, so while this is high, the PC’s won’t be farther behind than might be expected.) He also gets DR 6/- due to Adamantine full plate, and that DR stacks with the DR gained from the Armor Master archetype. He also has a darkwood tower shield, +1 natural armor (it’s an alternate trait for hobgoblins that replaces darkvision), and a ring of protection +3. That brings his total AC to 32 before fighting defensively or using Combat Expertise.

The other big thing that he has is an enhanced CMD. It’s normally 32, which isn’t too much higher than what’s normal. However, I got some other alternate racial traits that give him a +2 on bull rush and trips. Finally, through the Stalwart Defender class I gave him the Defensive abilities Bulwark, which adds his armor check penalty to the check for anyone to move past him using bluff or acrobatics, and the ability Halting Blow, so that anyone he hits with an Attack of Opportunity gets stopped in their tracks.

Overall I thought he went pretty well. I normally build characters that are more offensive than defensive, so this was an interesting challenge for me. I’d love to hear any suggestions or ideas in the comments.